'Grand old man of the Kimberley' dies

Some of Jack Dale Mengenen's paintings are a powerful affirmation of the richness of Indigenous culture. Others are a confronting, disturbing portrayal of violence and atrocity inflicted on his people on a far-flung frontier. As a painter he was known by his European name Jack Dale and his long life bridged the violent collision and eventual comity between two vastly disparate worlds. It's shocking to contemplate that this elderly artist, who died on Saturday in Derby Western Australia, saw most of the injustice first-hand.

In his working life as stockman, Jack Dale was sought for his stock and bush skills by the white owners of cattle stations in the Kimberley region. In his twilight years, as an acclaimed Indigenous artist, his work was sought by collectors in Australia and abroad. His large bold images, vividly and deftly depicted, fetch thousands of dollars at auction and now hang in important art galleries.

Jack Dale was also a senior law man, a custodian of the ancient, sacred lore of the Ngarinyin people whose traditional country encompasses a vast tract of spectacular and rugged ranges including the Leopold Ranges in Australia's far north-west. It was here that Jack Dale was imbued with the Dreamtime stories of his people and its emblematic image of the mythical, powerful Wandjina - the cloud and rain spirits who created and shaped the landscape and its inhabitants.

Thought to be have been born in 1922 (no record exists) at Mount House Station in the eastern Kimberley, for some reason he was never able to discover his life was spared at birth. Jack Dale's mother was Indigenous, his father a violent, hard-living, hard drinking frontiersman of Scottish descent. It was common practice in those times for babies of mixed descent to be killed in infancy. When his father met a premature, violent end, Jack fled into the bush with his mother's father, growing up in a traditional lifestyle. He evaded discovery from white authorities which would have meant his forced removal to a government-run reserve. It enabled him to learn the ancient law and lore and gave him an intimate knowledge of sacred sites, including rock art containing Wandjinas - mysterious haloed figures daubed in ochre. Scientists have dated some paintings to 4,800 B.C.

Bloody frontier

The Kimberley of Jack Dale's youth was still a bloody frontier, inhabited by a white minority of hardy European settlers and some unscrupulous rogues. The region's geographic isolation often put it beyond the reach of British justice and its vastness aided the concealment of barbarous crimes, even as recently as the 1920s. Jack Dale knew of many massacre sites. Of one gorge holding piles of human bones, he recalled how they were "all chucked in together. They reckon the blackfella only like an animal, so they (the whites) should clean up the country. They didn't know what they were being killed for".

Cattlemen whose large herds had ruptured traditional Indigenous hunting patterns and ways of life were merciless on natives suspected of cattle spearing. Often while concealed in the bush for his own safety, Jack Dale witnessed countless atrocities to his people by police and pastoralists. A recurring theme in his art is the depiction of traditional men, women and children, alleged cattle-spearers, manacled in heavy chains and housed inside and around giant boab trees. These hollow giants, such as the Prison Tree on the outskirts of Derby, served as makeshift jails for prisoners who were then shipped to incarceration thousands of kilometres away to Perth. Now a popular tourist attraction, it's a grisly reminder of a terrible past.

Jack Dale's own father was an acknowledged murderer, known to have killed Indigenous work gangs he had conscripted into building roads. He even shot his own son when Jack, tired of the violence and rough treatment, tried to run away. Jack got a bullet in the leg and was chained in the roof of a rough bush hut for days in searing heat.

Jack Dale saw many momentous events. He was strafed by Japanese aircraft during the bombing of Roebuck Bay, Broome in 1942. At least 40 people were killed, including Jack's offsider, a memory he later depicted on canvas. He saw some of the last corroborees and sacred ceremonies of his people, the coming of missionaries bringing Christianity, lines of camels and their Afghan drivers hauling provisions across the outback and donkey teams pulling supply wagons. All of this occurred within a lifetime, all of it before the coming of the motor car.

Jack Dale estimated he had worked on 46 cattle stations. Like other former stockmen and station workers including Rover Thomas, Paddy Bedford, Jack Britten and Queenie McKenzie, all now deceased but acknowledged as great artists, Jack Dale Mengenen only began to paint his stories after he retired from the saddle. Jack Dale was almost 80 when Neil McLeod, a Melbourne art dealer, collector and recorder of cultural history, convinced him to tell his stories through art.

The Ngarinyin senior man eagerly grasped the chance to record his knowledge. A close collaboration and friendship ensued and hundreds of works, often two metres in size, followed. As the art world's appreciation of Jack Dale's work increased, so did the prices of his paintings. Several major works have fetched close to $50,000 at auction. Jack Dale is represented in the National Parliament Collection, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Australian Museum, Canberra and many major collections worldwide. A large exhibition of his works was recently on show at the Yapa Gallery in Paris.

"He was so proud of his culture. He took his role as custodian of the Dreaming stories very seriously," said Ian Plunkett, a director of Japingka Gallery in Perth, which has represented the artist for some years.

"He was one of the last custodians of those Wandjina figures of the Leopold Ranges. His passing is an enormous loss to Australia's art and culture.

Carrying on the legacy

Jack Dale passed on much of his knowledge to his own people. His wife Biddy Dale and his daughter Edna Dale are both accomplished Kimberley artists. Edna's daughters Petrina and Kylie Bedford are also making a name for themselves in the art world.

Jack Dale Mengenen was sometimes called the "grand old man of the Kimberley." Despite all the hardships he endured during his life he carried no grudges, though he was saddened by some aspects of modern life. He was proud of how he had "foot-walked" all over the vast expanse of the Kimberley region. His knowledge, committed to canvas and print, has provided evidence for Indigenous land claims and ownership.

A little more than a year ago he suffered a serious stroke but with the same toughness he showed in the stock camps, he slowly and determinedly resumed his daily painting regime, though a little shakily and on smaller canvasses.

In conveying and helping to preserve the story of his people and his traditional country, the oxide-red ranges and vast open plains of the land so entwined with his being, Jack Dale Mengenen leaves an incalculable cultural legacy.